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Kathmandu Thursday July 12, 2001 Ashadh 27, 2058.
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Invest in social sector
This year’s Human Development Report brought out by the
United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has placed Nepal in an unexpectedly better
position compared to the previous year. This is an indication that the country is making
slow progress in terms of human development. Last year Nepal stood at the 144th position
out of 162 countries, a ranking that hardly made us feel upbeat on the human development
criteria. However, Nepal still remains more or less on par with 53 countries which are low
on the human development index (HDI). The late Laurent Kabila’s war torn Democratic
Republic of the Congo stands only three positions away from Nepal. Successive governments
have realized that investment in the social sector would benefit the country in the long
run. But what saddens us is that the people living below the poverty line have not been
able to break out of the poverty trap as such.
The HDI report that was released the other day shows that
Nepal’s mortality rate declined from 165 in 1970 to 75 in 1999. Similarly, the under
five mortality rate also decreased by over 60 percent in three decades. However, the rate
of life expectancy stands below that of Bhutan and Bangladesh, leave aside the life
expectancy rate in other South Asian countries. In terms of the human poverty index, Nepal
ranks 77th out of 90 developing countries. More than half of the population still lives in
abject poverty and half of the adult population is illiterate. Similarly, the female
literacy rate stands as low as 22.8 percent. It is saddening to note that out of 146
countries, Nepal is one of the three which has the lowest female literacy. However, the
jump Nepal has made by 15 positions in the HDI is a result of improvement in the education
sector. The gross enrollment ratio of school going children stands at 60 percent, which is
the highest in South Asia.
The government must realize the fact that the higher the
budget allocation in the social sector, the more the people are benefited. Such an
investment will certainly reduce the gap between the rich and poor. Education and health
are the two social sectors in which the Koirala government has failed to make any
perceptible progress. The government has increased its development expenditure for
education by about 18 percent, which is far less than the budget allocated for debt
servicing. Similarly, the government has allocated just 7 percent of its development
expenditure for health. This shows that although the government has introduced
anti-poverty measures, it has not allocated adequate funds for the social sector nor has
it taken this sector seriously enough. That has to change, and preferably before the next
HDI report comes out.
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